From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2012-05-21T18:12:08+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby in a box

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 1:46 AM, Robert Klemme
<shortcutter@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> There's also a "lightweight" variant:
>
> 1. any text editor with syntax highlighting and code indention for
> Ruby (gvim?) - maybe there's also a standalone code formatter.
>
> 2. IRB, pry
>
> 3. Terminal
>
> 4. ri

Have you used drracket? It's *really* pleasant to have everything
integrated and working together, particularly when you're learning. I
think it would be a nice experience to bring to the ruby world.

> I do not know how good this works on Windows since I only use self
> compiled Ruby on cygwin.

The windows CMD terminal is pretty painful to use (I'm not sure if
anything better ships with more modern versions of windows).

>> * Would this be a useful thing to have?
>>
>> I think so - at the very least on windows, opening up a terminal
>> window to run stuff is not a natural thing to do, and I'm sure there
>> are lots of linux and mac users who would prefer a nice integrated
>> environment within which to learn ruby.
>
> Right, it might reduce the learning curve.  But wouldn't it then also
> need features to easily built graphical user interfaces?

I thought about that, but I'd say building GUIs is, at least in the
ruby world, a fairly advanced thing to do. Also, for some reason,
there just doesn't seem to be a large community of people developing
gui desktop apps in ruby. On the other hand, there are *lots* of other
areas where ruby is a very heavily-used and useful tool, both in the
console-based data processing and automation, and in webapps. It would
probably be a greater bang for the buck to include a sinatra + webrick
quickstart plugin.

>> * Should it be written in ruby?
>
> It could as well be written in HTML - meaning: proper documentation.
> The benefit would be that people get along on more different systems
> (i.e. without the overhead of installing an IDE and even without a
> graphical UI at all).  It might be a bit more rough than a single
> installer which throws everything (Ruby, IDE...) on the system.  But
> then again, if it's software, maintenance efforts are higher.

Yeah, that's true, but it could also be more useful if done right.

martin